Dini is a great choice as in my eyes, the Batman from the animated series is the definitive Batman.

However, I gotta go with Denny O'Neil. He brought Batman back from the camp and goofiness that was pervasive in the 50's and 60's. I think Frank Miller made Batman popular again, but without the back-to-his-roots style of O'Neil, Miller would not have been able to tell his version.

Now, having mentioned Miller, you might think he should be the definitive writer because he really set the tone of how Batman is portrayed in the comics since. But he actually didn't write all that many Batman stories, it's just the ones he did had such an impact.

However, I gotta go with Denny O'Neil. He brought Batman back from the camp and goofiness that was pervasive in the 50's and 60's. I think Frank Miller made Batman popular again, but without the back-to-his-roots style of O'Neil, Miller would not have been able to tell his version.

He's the newcomer to the Batman mythos but Snyder is definitely making his mark on the character.

Thought of him after I posted, he is becoming quite the superstar.

outcast wrote:

For my money:

Dennis O'NeilSteve EnglehartArchie Goodwin

Honorable mention:

Mike W. Barr

+1 to Barr, but my new respect for Goodwin still isn't enough to warrant his entry here... his contributions were well founded, memorable, but represents a small sample; he only lasted for seven issues. Let's give him Star Wars, toward which he scribed about 40 stories.

"We make a pretty good team, even if we don't work together." - My son

+1 to Barr, but my new respect for Goodwin still isn't enough to warrant his entry here... his contributions were well founded, memorable, but represents a small sample; he only lasted for seven issues. Let's give him Star Wars, toward which he scribed about 40 stories.

No argument from me that Goodwin didn't write enough Batman stories to satisfy (in fact, with one story in his editorial run an inventory story by Sal Amendola and Steve Englehart, and another story a Batman-Manhunter team-up, Archie wrote only five Batman solo stories during his seven-issue editorial run of Detective Comics). Regardless of that run's brevity, though, I have always felt that he nailed the character in those issues, and I decided decades ago that he was worthy of a spot in my personal pantheon alongside O'Neil and Englehart.

Let it be known, though, that there were other Batman stories, later, during A.G.'s final employment at DC. There was the 1990 Detective Comics Annual #3. There was a graphic novel: Night Cries (1993). There was Legends of the Dark Knight #0 (Oct. 1994), though it appears that this may not have been a story, so much as a series of coming attractions in narrative form (I wonder if I missed this one; I don't remember reading it). There were two short stories in Batman Black and White (#s 1 & 4, 1996). And there was an incomplete five-part story that ran posthumously in Legends of the Dark Knight #s 132–136, finished by James Robinson.

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